Fraser MacInnes is a mobile games industry professional who cut his teeth writing for Pocket Gamer. He's now working at iQU, a behavioural knowledge company working in the games sector.

There's nothing quite so deliciously satisfying as pointing out the shortcomings of others, particularly when the object of scorn is a fallen giant that's beaten a path to failsville almost as quickly as it rose to prominence.

Zynga, it's fair to say, has seen happier times.

Its share price has cratered and several production staff have anonymously penned poisonous blogs, all of which feature complaints about unreasonable pressure and broken promises.

Meanwhile Zynga's management team – of those that haven't been dropped or demoted – face accusations of insider trading, an EA lawsuit, and, to top it all off, the gaming public at large has denounced the company as a shameless plagiarist.

Same problems, different companies

My title for this month's column might seem foolishly optimistic in light of all that.

But the thing is, Zynga's problems are not unique. Its problems may be more extreme, and they are certainly more visible than most, but social gaming has spread at an alarming rate and the growing pains are being felt everywhere.

Other giants of the realm – including Playfish, Gameforge, Bigpoint and several others – have made headlines for the wrong reasons over the last 12 months, with layoffs, cancelled projects and wavering stock prices featuring intermittently.

But besides the negative press, these companies have something else in common. They are all selling different versions of the same thing.

Why is it that Zynga is given a sound kicking by the media for creating a facsimile of Tiny Tower, when every social gaming company under the sun is pedalling re-skinned versions of the same resource management title?

Same games, different publishers

Indeed, let's look beyond the social gaming realm.

This year on their respective roadmaps, EA has Medal of Honor: Warfighter, THQ has Homefront 2 and Activision has Call of Duty: Black Ops II – it's not hard to join the dots.

Perhaps that's a facile example, but the fact remains that Zynga is no more guilty of plagiarism than the majority of other games companies.

And before you cry 'but what about the indies?', please – is it really reasonable to release a product into the marketplace in 2012 and expect nobody to copy it?

Sure, it speaks negatively of Zynga's own ability to innovate but it's hardly surprising that successful new types of game get remade by competitors.

Isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery?

What's even more transparent is that nobody seemed to care about Zynga's copy n' paste approach to development before its share price took a tumble.

Indeed, pre-IPO, Zynga was the social darling that was going to make everybody rich, an unstoppable market force testament to the virility and adaptability of the games industry - creative and entertainment scruples be damned!

Paying for big mistakes

Zynga, like many of its brethren, has made some big mistakes and needs to turn its business around. But, buried in among the many doom-mongering headlines are obvious signs of positive change.

For instance, the management shake ups that have gone on – particularly the embarrassingly public demotion of COO John Schappert – cannot have been easy decisions to make and suggest, at the very least, an awareness that drastic steps are necessary, even when the negative PR cost is huge.

Then there's Horn.

If Zynga's decision to publish a 3D console quality action adventure game (as opposed to another cash harvesting dopamine clicker) can't be roundly applauded as a good thing, then maybe soulless resource management games are all we deserve.

Or maybe with such low stock value, now is a good time to buy and the fewer people who know, the bigger everyone else wins. And the company has $1.6 billion in cash for further acquisitions, whether companies or game titles to build its publishing arm. 

Keep your mouse cursor away from that retweet button and we can both be rich!



You can follow Fraser's industry commentary on his blog, or else grab bite-size rants via Twitter.